Yesterday




Can you imagine the most guttural intense painful cry you've ever heard? Maybe something out of a movie where someone is being tortured?  The pain is so real it makes your shoulders tense, your eyes squint and your face grimace. You may even move your body back at the shock.  I've heard that cry before and not in a movie, and not because someone was being tortured, well not physically anyway. I have heard that cry in my own house, it has come out of  my own lips. The pain of loosing Dan is that intense. The only thing worse then hearing this sound come out my own lips is when it comes out of my 11 year old daughters. That pain is utterly indescribable.

Yesterday was three years, four months, and two ish weeks since Dan died. Horribly, suddenly he was gone. Then those guttural cries came out of everyone except Baby Girl. I don't think she knew how to make them, she was in complete and utter shock. She learned pretty fast though and we spent three years with both of us screaming and raging from the depths of our soul. Three years, not two, not one, not six months. Please if you are grieving don't listen to the morons that tell you you should feel better after six months. They are morons, it doesn't work like that, it just doesn't. 

It took me all the way until this third year to feel like I was finally getting my shit together so to speak. It took until this third year for me to feel like Baby Girl was getting her stuff together to. "She's doing great" I keep telling everybody. "She is so much better then she was even a year or six months ago. So am I. I stopped sending her therapist weekly updates because I had nothing to say. Year three we will get it together, we will feel better! I want to talk to her psychiatrist about taking her off her antidepressants. Yes I gave my then 9 year old antidepressants, her dad died she was so lost, it is one of the best things I ever did for her, even if you have read every blog i've written you can not understand the immense pain she has gone through. They helped so much. I want to talk to my psychiatrist about lessening my antidepressants, I'm a little scared still on that one but I think I can do it. Hooray year three, we are making progress. That was thursday.

Friday Baby Girl woke up. "I can't go to school today mommy, I need to stay with you." she has done this before, sometimes I can figure out why, it's a holiday or a significant date, or she had a bad dream. This time I had nothing, I couldn't figure out the reason. No, we are not doing this today, we have had a great week, we are going to make it to school today. "Ok lets wake up a little bit and have some breakfast and we will see how you feel. "I'm broken mommy, I'm broken today I need to stay with you"  My kid just told me she was broken, there is nothing physically wrong with her and she feels like shes broken. I feel broken too, we have both been broken since Dan died. Glue and tape can only go so far. It was holding for awhile but then it snapped.

I mention getting ready for school. "NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO" "I can't go to school I have to stay with mommy today" That's all it takes and the guttural screams of torture come. Her face is red her eyes are full of tears. She is so upset she can't sit still and she stomps through the house. She moans, she beats her fists against the couch.  I can't do this, I can't do this again, we were doing so well, we can't go back to doing this, I don't have it in me. I have tears in my eyes. I try to hold her I try to comfort her, she pushes me away. I try something new, something I've only tried a couple other times and they were met with a raging no, but shes growing, her grief is changing, every growth spurt her grief grows too.

So I give it a try "Would you like to cuddle on the couch with me and watch home movies of daddy?" She stops screaming, she wipes tears out of her eyes, she looks up at me, "Ya" she says faintly, ya that is exactly what we need to do today, we don't need to go to school, we don't need to go to work, we need to watch videos of daddy. "but only the ones with daddy and ME" well it's a good thing those are the only ones I have, I didn't really video Dan by himself, the focus was always on Baby Girl. I wish now I had. I wish I had caught some of his mannerisms, more of his smile.  we snuggle on the couch and watch videos for awhile. They include Dan teaching her how to ride a bike and how to fly. We both laugh at the silliness that is her daddy. We end on a really good one, the only one I have where he says I love you. It's quick, nonchalant, like a hi or a bye except I love you.  He is filming Baby Girl reading Green Eggs and Ham to me. She notices what he is doing and turns to him "Daddy! stop filming me" "ok Baby Girl, love you." "Love you to dad"

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

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